BIOGRAPHIES
Gwinneth A. Clarkson
Ms. Gwinneth A. Clarkson resides in Washington, DC. She has a BA degree in International Relations from American University, and an MBA from New York University in International Finance. Her professional experience since 1981 has been in banking and finance. She lived in Bogotá, Colombia, for ten years working in finance and economics. Gwinneth's volunteer activities include two years as Treasurer of a non-profit organization.
Philip H. Darrow
Phil is a member of St. Michael's, Barrington, which has a Covenant of Relationship with Renk Diocese, supporting Renk Theological College. He has traveled to Renk on behalf of St. Michael's, and visited various dioceses throughout the South with Buck Blanchard. He and his wife, Robin, founded Club 157, which seeks to raise funds to reduce the debt of the Province of the ECS. He also serves on the Commission on Global Ministry of the Diocese of Chicago, and St. Michael's Renk Ministry Partnership team. He is a lawyer for Ryland Homes.
Connie Fegley
Ms. Connie Fegley and her husband were fortunate to be able to attend the Hear the Cry! conference in New York City in 1998 about the persecuted church, and learning about the plight of the Episcopal Church of Sudan unleashed a force in her unlike anything she'd ever experienced. When they returned to the Diocese of Bethlehem, she inquired with her Archdeacon about a diocesan world mission committee and found that it was in a fallow period. By the end of the year, their Bishop Paul Marshall called together a crew of folks from around the diocese that became the committee and they asked her to be its chair. They were quickly led into concentrating on Africa, and God brought them into contact with the Diocese of Kajo Keji through the Rev. Michael Kiju Paul, then a seminarian at VTS.
Frederick E. Gilbert
Independent consultant focused on Africa and working in the fields of economic development planning, program management and evaluation since retiring from U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in 1994. USAID career spanned 30 years of which 22 were in African field assignments (Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Tanzania, Sudan and Ivory Coast), 17 in positions of executive responsibility for large unit management and seven years as Director of two field missions (USAID Mission to Sudan, and the Regional Office for West and Central Africa in Ivory Coast) and one Washington geographic office (Sahel West Africa). After leaving USAID, served as the Director of the core staff of the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning System, 1998 – 2000. Educated at the University of Minnesota, B.A., cum laude, in 1961 (International Relations with minors in International Economics and German) and at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, M.A.L.D. in 1963 and Ph.D. in 1976 (Concentrations in International and Development Economics).
Judith Lane Gregory, CPA
Judith Lane Gregory is the Business Manager for the Diocese of Delaware. She served the Episcopal Church of the Sudan for six months in 2008, as a financial consultant. Hers was a special appointment by The Episcopal Church here, fulfilling a request from the ECS to have a CPA who could help the Church set up consistent financial systems for the province and train diocesan treasurers and others with responsibilities for financial administration.
Rev. Dr. Ellen J. Hanckel
The Rev. Dr. Ellen J. Hanckel, Rector of Christ Episcopal Church, Martinsville, VA, since 2004, has been a member of AFRECS since 2005. She has Master of Divinity and Doctor of Ministry degrees from University of the South at Sewanee. She has been a freelance writer and reporter. Ellen has served as a volunteer for many community organizations. She represented the Diocese of VA on a trip to southern Sudan for the dedication of the Marc Nikkel School in Maar. She and her husband, Scott Derks, attended the Salisbury-Sudan link conference in July 2008, held in Salisbury.
Rev. Frederick Houghton
The Rev. Frederick L. Houghton (Rick) is a retired priest of the Diocese of Eastern Michigan. He taught at St. Mary's Theological School, Odibo, Namibia and the General Theological Seminary and served congregations in New York City, the Detroit area and the Diocese of Eastern Michigan. He has a MA and an ABD in African history from Michigan State University. In 2000 he spent six weeks at Kakuma Refugee Camp in Northern Kenya teaching in the Malek Bible School and briefly visited South Sudan with Bishop Nathaniel Garang of the Diocese of Bor. His current interest is the Democratic Party.
Rt. Rev. David Colin Jones
The Rt. Rev. David Colin Jones was ordained Bishop Suffragan of the Diocese of Virginia on June 24, 1995, at the Washington National Cathedral. He has served the Diocese of Virginia in a number of leadership roles: as Dean of Region 7; as a member and Secretary of the Standing Committee; as Chair of the Evangelism Committee; as a member, then Chair, of the Council Budget Committee; as a member of the Executive Board; as Chair of the Commission on Congregational Missions; as a member of the Commission on Church Planting; and as a member of the East Africa Committee of Region 7. In addition, he has hosted a radio broadcast in Northern Virginia featuring Episcopal clergy. In the Commonwealth of Virginia, Bishop Jones represents the Diocese of Virginia to the Virginia Council of Churches. He served as President of the Council from 1998-2000.
E. Ross Kane
E. Ross Kane is assistant to the rector at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Alexandria, Virginia. Ross grew up near Ashland , Virginia. He received a B.A. in Foreign Affairs and Religious Studies from the University of Virginia and an M. Div. from Duke Divinity School in May 2009. Before entering graduate school he served three years with the Episcopal Church's Young Adult Service Corps, working under Dr. Haruun Ruun, director of the New Sudan Council of Churches in Nairobi, in their support of peacemaking in southern Sudan. His work was documented in a film entitled "The Blood of the Bull", part of the 12-film series "Windows on Mission" commissioned by the Office of Anglican and Global Relations of the Episcopal Church. Ross is married to the former Liz Doughty, a health consultant and former Peace Corps volunteer in Mozambique. Ross was a resident steward at the Lambeth Conference of 2008 and attended the Diocese of Salisbury's Sudan Partners' meeting which preceded that Conference.
Carolyn Weaver Mackay, PhD
Carolyn was co-treasurer of AFRECS' organizing committee and chaired St. Paul's conference committee for the inaugural conference. An economist by training, Carolyn is the former Director of Social Security and Pension Studies at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, a position she held from 1987-2000. She has served on several federal advisory councils dealing with social security and disability policy, has testified frequently on Capitol Hill, and has written books, articles, and editorials on these subjects. She's been a policy advisor to two presidential candidates. Before joining AEI, Carolyn worked at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and on the staff of the Senate Finance Committee. She has also taught economics at Tulane University and Virginia Tech. Carolyn is recognized in Who's Who in America, and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She lives in Vienna, Va., with her husband and two teenage sons. She is presently a stay-at-home mom.
Russell Randle
Russ Randle is an attorney, a partner in the Washington, DC office of Patton Boggs LLP, a large law firm. His practice includes export controls and foreign sanctions work, including questions arising under the Sudan Sanctions Regulations, as well as litigation and environmental work. Russ has worked with the Diocese of Renk in Sudan since 1997, having gone to Sudan three times in support of that work, most recently in May 2006, and to Kenya and Uganda in 2002 to the Kakuma Refugee Camp, and to meet with the Wycliffe team working on the Dinka Old Testament. Russ has worked at the national level of the Episcopal Church as a deputy to General Convention from Virginia (2003, 2006), and in lobbying on Sudan issues in coordination with the Episcopal Church's Office of Government Relations. He has been a member of Christ Church, Alexandria since 1980, and has served in many positions there.
Debra Morris Smith
Debra Morris Smith has been interested in Sudan since 2000, when she began teaching English to a group of Sudanese refugee women in Des Moines. After moving to St. Louis, she was on the first mission (in 2003) from the Diocese of Missouri to the Diocese of Lui. She is currently Missouri's mission coordinator and liaison to the Diocese of Lui, and brings to the work not only a passion for the people of Sudan, but also a lifetime of experience in the church as first a priest's and now a bishop's wife, a Ph.D. in English and many years' experience as a teacher at various levels and now an administrator in adult education, and a knowledge of the Arabic language that sometimes comes in handy on the ground in Sudan.
Executive Director Biography
C. Richard Parkins
Richard Parkins recently completed fourteen years of service as director of Episcopal Migration Ministries - the refugee and immigration assistance and advocacy arm of The Episcopal Church. Richard has worked in the refugee field for the past 28 years, commencing his career as director of operations for the US Office of Refugee Resettlement in 1980 and serving in various capacities with non-profit resettlement agencies including Lutheran Refugee and Immigration Service and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. From 2006-2008 Richard served as chair of the Refugee Council USA- the major U.S. coalition of refugee assistance and refugee rights organizations. In May 2008, Richard was a member of an Episcopal-Lutheran delegation to the enthronement of Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul and used that occasion to understand more fully the circumstances facing returning refugees and IDPS subsequent to the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Plan.
In 1998, Richard was a part of a church visit to the Sudan under the leadership of the late Marc Nikkel. In addition to time with Sudanese refugees in the Kakuma camp in northern Kenya, this church mission traveled extensively in the Diocese of Bor with Bishop Nathaniel Garang and Marc Nikkel. In that same year, Richard was a representative of The Episcopal Church to a roundtable of the Sudan Council of Churches where he was also hosted by the then Bishop of Renk, Bishop Daniel Deng Bul. Since his early work with Marc Nikkel, Richard has been an advocate for a more robust policy by the USG in advancing the rights and welfare of the southern Sudanese community in their struggle for justice and peace and was a part of the initial efforts to establish AFRECS.
Richard's career has included consultancy work for The Ford Foundation in India, the Asian Development Bank in Malaysia, the World Bank in Thailand, and the UNDP in Jamaica. Following his graduate training at the University of Pennsylvania, Richard taught at San Francisco State University.
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